These thoughts flashed through Faye’s mind in seconds, causing her to pause only a few heartbeats to look inward. Still, those heartbeats had been too long. Ms. Slater had stood there, gun aimed, and waited for Faye to think. Why hadn’t she forced Faye to move toward the goal? A woman with an obsession for treasure did not wait patiently for people to think. Why was Ms. Slater hesitating?
It was because she didn’t have a clue where Bachelder had buried the Confederate Gold.
Elizabeth Slater was waiting for Faye to lead the way. But she should have known the exact spot. What information was the woman missing?
“You don’t know where it is.” Faye almost laughed when she said it. “Why don’t you know? You’ve had the field notebooks for more than a week, and they document the exact spot where I dug up the hip flask. That’s what led you to me…and to Douglass. Right? When you read in the newspaper about an artifact linked to Bachelder that was dug up on an island near here, you knew he probably buried it with the necklace and for the same reason. It was made of a precious metal that would be worth something when the Confederacy’s economy collapsed, even if his paper money wasn’t. Any reference librarian worth her salt would have known that. And she would surely have figured out where he buried it by now.”
Ms. Slater was still silent.
“You had Chip cut my brake lines. Why would you try to kill me if I’m the only one who can find the treasure for you? That doesn’t make a bit of sense.”
“I thought you were expendable. I was wrong.”
Reality dawned. Faye would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so dire. “You don’t have all the notebooks. I pulled one notebook out of the box and took it with me when I left Douglass that night. I took the one I was using when I found…”
She stopped. Ms. Slater had no way to know that she’d found the emerald. She was simply hoping Faye would lead her to the necklace and the Confederate Gold, based on the discovery of Bachelder’s hip flask.
“I thought it didn’t matter. I thought you could find the gold, even without that notebook, but you’re missing the critical information. Yes, you have the notebook where I documented the hip flask, and it should have taken you to the treasure. But I found it before the hurricane took out the tree I used as a reference point and changed the shape of the whole island. You sent Nita and Wayland here to do your digging, but they couldn’t find the spot because the landmarks were gone.”
Ms. Slater twitched the gun toward the shovel in the bottom of her boat. Faye picked it up and kept talking, “You were going to kill me, so that you and your flunky would be the only people who knew the treasure was here. Aren’t you glad you didn’t manage it? Loser.”
Ms. Slater foot lashed out and kicked Faye in the butt, forcing her to take a step forward. “Walk, or I shoot your handsome friend.”
Faye stole a glance at Joe, who was still unobtrusively stretching his bonds. She took a single step, then started talking again. “Wally. Why is Wally dead?”
“It’s Wally’s fault you’re here right now. He was supposed to help Chip get all the information he could about where you found that hip flask. Then Mr. Everett surprised them by being home that night and Wally got all prissy about getting rid of him. Fortunately, Chip understood the importance of keeping the old man quiet.”
“It seems that even Wally had more morals than you. That puts you pretty low on the ethical totem pole.”
Ms. Slater didn’t bat an eye at Faye’s comment. She just went on defaming the dead. “Wally was gung-ho about this project when it was all about money. He’d been laying low since the hurricane, but Chip’s mother has a soft spot for Wally. She and Chip have always known where he was. And Chip knew that Wally had been pothunting these islands for years. If there’s a place to bury something around here, Wally knew about it. Chip asked Wally to help us find the necklace, and he was happy to do it, until you and Douglass got in the way.”
Faye’s eyes watered. So Wally had learned something since she saw him last. He’d been perfectly willing to double-cross her back then, maybe even send her to jail, for a chance at big bucks. If he’d clashed with Chip over Douglass’ killing, then he’d clearly grown a conscience in his old age. And it had cost him his life.
“Wally was going to tell you everything,” Ms. Slater continued. She was clearly angry with Wally, even now, and it was making her chatty. This was good. While she was chatting, she wasn’t shooting. “He was afraid you’d get hurt like Douglass did. He should have known that Chip would never let him warn you, but he tried anyway. Look where it got him.”
Faye’s tears burned. Wally had known he was risking his life by trying to warn her, but he did it anyway. He’d died before he could tell her anything, but he’d managed to pass enough information to lead her to Bachelder’s letters…and to his own killer. His sacrifice more than made up for his earlier betrayal. There weren’t many people in the world to weep for Wally, but he had earned Faye’s grief.
Ms. Slater didn’t share her sorrow. “Without that scum Wally, you’d be nothing to me but some initials on a field notebook. Without him, you wouldn’t have come snooping in my library.”
“You’d have gone looking for the archaeologist who wrote those field notes sooner or later. Because you don’t know where the treasure is. And I’m going to die today. Why should I tell you?”
“Because you’re hoping I won’t kill you. Maybe I’ll try to buy you off with part of the treasure. And maybe you’ll let me do that, if I promise not to kill him.” She reached out a hand and shoved Joe, hard. With his feet hobbled, he couldn’t stop himself from toppling. It broke Faye’s heart to watch him fall, but then she noticed something. Sprawled as he was, with his hands and feet under him, he was freer to struggle with his bonds. And his position put Ms. Slater a slight disadvantage.
With Joe on the ground and Faye standing up, the librarian couldn’t keep them both in a single field of vision. To look from one prisoner to another, she had to shift her eyes slightly. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Faye stuck out a foot to the right and shifted her weight in that direction, widening the gap between her and Joe. Making it harder for Ms. Slater to look at Joe made it slightly easier for him to work at freeing himself.
“No, I don’t have the magic field notebook that tells me the key to your sampling plan. So I don’t know the exact spot you found Bachelder’s flask. But I’ve finally got something better than a bunch of field notes that maybe, just maybe, will point me to the spot where you dug up that flask. I’ve got you. Start digging.”
Faye reflected that Ms. Slater must think she was a supernaturally good archaeologist, if she expected her to walk straight to an excavation she’d dug and backfilled years ago. She had only a general idea of where it was, but it was certainly near the spot where she’d found the emerald a few days before. No way was she going to dig there and risk giving Ms. Slater what she wanted. Not while Joe continued to unobtrusively stretch his bonds.
An inspired idea struck her. She would lead Chip and Ms. Slater to the messy pit that Nita and Wayland had left behind. It was near enough to the true location to be realistic, and someone had obviously been excavating there. Her captor was surely smart enough to know the general vicinity of Bachelder’s treasure, so it was important that the decoy spot be plausible. Otherwise, Faye would have taken this expedition to a spot right on the waterfront and hoped that a passing fisherman would notice her distress.
Joe followed along, but his hobbles caused him to lag behind. Faye could see him taking slow strides, but long ones. He was stretching that tape with every step. If she could just give him a chance to break free, they could…what? She knew she didn’t want Joe to rush a murderous woman with a gun. Still, if he could break those bonds, the two of them would be that much freer to exploit an opportunity for escape. She quickened her pace, trying to force Ms. Slater to divide her attention between two captives who stood slightly farther apart with every step.
<
br /> Chip was another factor to consider. He was no idiot—Liz had been right when she bragged on her boy’s smarts. He was steering a path slightly further away from Faye and Joe than necessary, and to their right. Faye could tell he was trying to position himself to keep them both within eyeshot at the same time. At least his hands were empty of weapons. Still, he was nearly a match for Joe in size, and he’d been proven capable of murderous violence. Chip bore watching.
Standing on the lip of the muddy hole Nita and Wayland had left behind, Faye took the shovel Ms. Slater had forced her to carry and carved a bite of dirt from the bottom of the hole. The rhythmic digging tranquilized her, as it always did, and it focused her thoughts. If she could just get her enemy to stand beside her and look down, the woman’s balance would be thrown ever so slightly forward, and her focus would shift away from her gun. Faye’s notion of what she would do at that point was fuzzy, but it might be her only chance to do anything at all.
It was clear that she’d have to find a way to neutralize the gun. Joe would be stretched to his limit by taking on Chip, one-on-one, especially if his hands and feet were still severely constrained. Joe was big, strong and fit, so he might be able to pull it off. Unfortunately, Chip was also big, strong, and fit, and he was several years younger than Joe. Was there a significant difference in physical prowess between a man who was twenty-two and another who was twenty-nine? She didn’t know. Probably not, but this situation was critical enough that having even a small edge might give their captors the ability to take their lives.
She sneaked a look over her shoulder at Joe, without having any hope that he’d already worked himself free. He opened his hand a millimeter to give her a look at the piece of flint that it held, and she let a little hope take hold. Ms. Slater might have been trying to humiliate Joe when she shoved him to the ground, but she had accomplished something else. When his hands were trapped under him, his body had shielded them from view. He’d used that chance to work open the leather pouch that always hung at his waist…and that pouch was always brim-full of deadly weapons.
She was dead-certain that Joe had already used the blade in his hand to slice through the tape binding his hands. Nothing could be done about his feet without alerting Chip and Ms. Slater, but a fair fight between Joe and Chip might now be possible. Chip would have the use of his feet, but Joe had a weapon that could slice Chip right open, and he knew precisely how to use it. Faye just needed to give him the opportunity.
She raised the shovel higher than strictly necessary and paused, taking aim at a target that just might save them.
“Would you get on with it?” Ms. Slater barked. “I know you dig faster than this when you’re on the clock.”
Faye thrust the shovel down hard into a tree root, and she got what she wanted--the clacking sound of metal on wood. Peering down, she asked, “Is that a wooden box?”
Ms. Slater, hearing what she had expected to hear, stooped forward slightly for a look at her hoped-for treasure chest. There was no doubt that Joe would see this opportunity and realize that Faye was about to take it.
Afterward, Faye was amazed how clearly she could recall the next seconds. She could visualize the sudden and unexpected reactions of three other people with so much detail that her memories felt like movies, shot from above. It was as if she could look down and see how all four of them were reacting to unforeseen events—Ms. Slater, Joe, Chip, and even herself.
Their actions intertwined like a demented minuet. Faye and Ms. Slater, facing each other, bowed to peer into the pit. Joe leapt in Chip’s direction. The younger man’s arm rose gracefully in front of him to shoulder height.
And then all hell erupted.
That brief glance between Faye and Joe had communicated everything they needed to coordinate their assault. Faye would distract Ms. Slater, then attack, hoping to get control of the gun. In the hubbub, Joe would take on Chip.
The flaw in this plan was to presume that when Joe charged Chip, the younger man would defend himself.
Chapter Twenty-five
When Faye remembered those moments…when she could no longer avoid remembering those moments…she saw Ms. Slater lean forward slightly over the hole to see what Faye had found, and she saw herself yank the shovel out handle-first, aiming for the librarian’s throat. Perhaps things would have gone differently if she’d only connected with that throat. Instead, the handle poked hard in Ms. Slater’s upper chest—hard enough to knock her on the ground, but not nearly hard enough to eliminate the woman as a danger.
Joe, in a single motion, had lifted himself from the ground and charged Chip. He needed to cover a fair distance to reach Chip, which cost him the element of surprise, but he still might have been able to pull it off through sheer athletic prowess. The odds should have been at least even—one well-muscled man beating the hell out of another well-muscled man—but neither Faye nor Joe had even considered that Chip might be armed. He just didn’t seem subtle enough to have let the tiny little handgun in his pocket remain a secret until needed.
He’d always given the impression of being a gregarious and affable young man—intelligent, maybe, but not terribly shrewd. Today, Faye had learned that he had a serious violent streak. And, at this terrible moment, she’d been reminded of what Liz had been telling her for years. The boy was smart.
Joe should have been dead in an instant, launching himself at nearly point-blank range toward a man with a gun, but that instant passed, because Chip had another target in mind. His arm swung to the left, so that he could take aim on Faye, and Joe saw it happen.
Why had Chip done that? Why would he have wanted to shoot her, rather than taking out the more immediate threat?
Faye now saw the answer as clearly as she saw the intricate moves of their desperate dance. Chip hadn’t committed all his grievous sins out of a lust for treasure, though the promise of treasure was what had brought him to the rare book room in the first place. Chip had done burglary and kidnapping, and he’d done murder twice, because he loved the woman that Faye was trying to beat into unconsciousness.
Chip had seen that he only had time for a single shot before Joe was on him, and he had chosen to use it on Faye, because she was trying to hurt the woman he loved.
How could Chip have possibly known that Joe would make the same choice?
Joe had passed up the opportunity to rush Chip while the gun was pointed elsewhere, because he couldn’t take the chance that he’d be too late to stop a bullet from hitting Faye. Instead, he had called Faye’s name in an effort to warn her, prompting her to take the dangerous risk of turning away from a woman with a gun. This meant that she saw it happen. She would never forget that she saw it happen.
Joe had twisted around to call out to her and, at the same time, he had launched himself sideways, putting himself between Faye and a loaded gun. He was quick—Joe had always been quick—so he was in the air, acting as a human shield, when Chip pulled the trigger. The bullet hit him dead-center in the middle of his back.
At this point, it no longer mattered to Faye that there were two loaded firearms pointed in her direction. Her shovel had hit the ground as she fled to Joe’s side.
She’d screamed, “There’s no treasure! It’s not here. It hasn’t been here in a long, long time!” then she’d leaned down and put a trembling hand on the side of Joe’s throat, looking for a pulse.
Dropping to the dirt beside him, she’d dropped her wet face into her hands and shrieked, “You’ve killed him. You killed him for nothing, because Bachelder took everything away, the first chance he got. Why would you think he didn’t? Greed, that’s why. You wanted that gold and those emeralds so bad, it never occurred to you that it made no sense for them to be here.”
Her sobbing had echoed across Joyeuse Island as she sat, rocking back and forth, waiting for a bullet or two to come and take her out of her misery.
***
The bullet came. She couldn’t tell where it struck her. She just se
nsed the physical shock of a tremendous collision, followed by pain radiating through the entire upper left quadrant of her torso. She couldn’t keep her body upright any more, so she let herself drop down beside Joe.
She had a clear sense that consciousness was ebbing, and an equally clear sense that she had control over that. She could succumb to shock, and let the fear and rage and anger go. She could die in peace. Or she could try to live.
She decided in favor of living, because Joe needed her. He needed her bad.
She had lied about the weak, thready pulse she’d felt in the hollow beneath his jaw. If fortune smiled, then Chip would believe her, and he would fail to walk over and put a bullet through Joe’s head.
It was possible. He had failed to make sure Douglass was dead after he’d beaten the life out of him—after he’d beaten almost all the life out of him. And he’d walked away from Wally without taking the time to be certain he was dead. In both cases, he’d been right in the end. He had indeed inflicted injuries that were fatal. But for whatever reason—squeamishness, denial, or the simple need to get away before he was caught—Chip had walked away without making sure his victims were really gone.
It was possible that her lie had convinced him that he had no need to finish Joe off. Now she needed to convince him that one bullet had been enough to kill Faye, too.
Maybe it had. A bullet in the upper left part of her body might have passed through her heart or her lungs or any one of the huge vessels transporting blood to and from those organs. She didn’t know how badly she was hurt, but she had fallen with her chin tucked down toward her chest, and she didn’t see blood spurting with every heartbeat. That was the most hopeful thing she could think of at the moment. If she lay still and tried to look like someone who’d been shot through the heart, maybe Chip would go away so she could save Joe—though how she might manage that was anybody’s guess.
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